Faculty Book Celebration with Judith Butler

Featuring keynote speaker philosopher and gender studies scholar Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley and author, “Who’s Afraid of Gender?”

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Who’s Afraid of Gender?

In their most recent book, Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose iconic book Gender Trouble redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on “gender” that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed “anti–gender ideology movements” that are dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous, perhaps diabolical, threat to families, local cultures, civilization ― and even “man” himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence and strip trans and queer people of their rights to pursue a life without fear of violence.

Who’s Afraid of Gender? examines how “gender” has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations and trans-exclusionary feminists. Butler illuminates the concrete ways that this phantasm of “gender” collects and displaces anxieties and fears of destruction. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of “critical race theory” and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation.

About the speaker

Judith Butler is distinguished professor in the Graduate School and former Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. They served as founding director of the Critical Theory Program as well as the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs at UC Berkeley.

Butler’s major works include Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993), Excitable Speech (1997), Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and Mourning (2004); Undoing Gender (2004) and Giving an Account of Oneself (2005). Their books have been translated in 27 languages. In 2024, they published Who’s Afraid of Gender?

About the Faculty Book Celebration

The publication of a monograph or significant creative work is a milestone in the career of an academic. The Center for the Humanities commemorates this achievement annually during the Faculty Book Celebration. The event recognizes Washington University faculty from the humanities and humanistic social sciences by displaying their recently published works and large-scale creative projects and inviting two campus authors and a guest lecturer to speak at a public gathering.